USB is an external bus standard that specifies the electrical connections and data transfer operations needed to enable electronic devices to interface and communicate with each other. USB is a serial interface that is often used in place of RS232 serial interfaces and parallel interfaces to connect peripheral devices (e.g., mice, keyboards, printers, etc.) to computers (e.g., desktop and laptop computers). Most desktop and laptop computers on the market today are equipped with multiple USB connectors, each of which is designed to mate with a respective USB plug. A typical USB connector is configured with electrical contacts that are designed to couple to electrical contacts external to the USB connector in order to perform data transfer and power supply functions. Some of the electrical contacts of the USB connector are used to couple electrical contacts of a USB plug to the electrical circuitry of the USB connector, whereas some of the electrical contacts of the USB connector are used to couple the electrical circuitry of the USB connector to conductive traces formed on a motherboard of a computer. The combination of the USB connector mated with the USB plug is known as a USB connector assembly.
In recent years, owing to the increasing amount of data traffic between computers and their peripheral devices, USB connector assemblies have been equipped to support increasing speeds: e.g., increases from the 10 megabits per second (Mbps) speed provided by the USB1 standard to the 480 Mbps and 5 gigabits per second (Gbps) speeds provided by the USB2 and USB3 standards, respectively. There continues to be a demand for computer-to-peripheral communications that operate at even higher speeds. For example, most high-resolution, real-time video will require data rates above 10 Gbps. At speeds above 5 Gbps, the conventional copper wire connections used for USB devices will become difficult to implement and will have limited reach.
An important goal in the latest generations of thin, lightweight, low-power consumption computing devices is reducing the number of input/output (I/O) ports on the computing devices. The use of USB connector assemblies to replace other types of legacy connector assemblies has helped achieve the goal of reducing the number of ports that are needed on computing devices. However, the limited number of signal pins (two for USB2 standard for simplex communications and four for USB3 for duplex communications) is insufficient to accommodate multi-pin, high-speed interfaces, such as, for example, High Definition Multi-Media Interface (HDMI) and DisplayPort interfaces needed for high-resolution display devices.
Accordingly, a need exists for a connector assembly that is capable of accommodating multi-pin, high-speed interfaces needed for high data rate devices, such as high-resolution display devices, for example, and that is backwards compatible with USB standards.